The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the inventors hereof, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted to be prior art against the present disclosure.
When operating in an infrastructure mode, wireless local area networks (WLANs) typically include an access point (AP) and one or more client stations. These WLANs operate in either a unicast mode or a multicast mode. In the unicast mode, the AP transmits information to one client station at a time. In the multicast mode, the same information is concurrently transmitted to a group of client stations. Development of WLAN standards such as the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n Standards has improved data throughput by allowing transmitting across frequency bandwidth. Thus, a scheduling mechanism is needed to schedule data frames transmitted between the AP and multiple client stations. For example, the AP and/or the client station needs to know which channel a data frame is being transmitted, how much bandwidth out of a channel is allocated to a specific user, and/or the like.